What's In a Name

Summary:

“Names come and go. People who know who, and what, you are… that is more rare.”

Work Text:

“… And I realized that this man I liked, the man I had flirted with for years, and then worked closely with, who knew me better than anyone else in the world, this man didn’t even know my name. What does that say about me?”

The woman who wasn’t Sophie any more knew that she shouldn’t be being this honest to anyone, especially not a stranger, but the beer wine had been very, very good. It continued to be very, very good.

The stranger seemed distantly sympathetic however. “Maybe it means that your name isn’t the important thing about you.”

“I haven’t gone by my original name for the better part of my life. I ran far and fast when I left that name behind and I avoided letting anyone connect me with who I had once been. Then one day, a man came into my apartment, took one look at me, and called me by my name.”

“Mmm. It was magical. He knew me. Or so I thought. It was later that I discovered, under some pretty harsh circumstances, that it wasn’t me that he knew. It wasn’t even the person I had been so many, many years ago that he knew. I have done a lot of things, some of them terrible, a few of them good. And he didn’t know any of them. All he knew was an old name that I didn’t even use anymore. He told me that he didn’t know who, or what, I was.”

“Oh.”

“Names come and go. People who know who, and what, you are… that is more rare.”

Not-Sophie took a long look at her most recent drink before finishing it entirely. She would sober up in the morning and get a plane ticket back to Leverage. It was time to go back to the people who knew her, even if they didn't know her name.